Ricardo Bell, a San Francisco native, grew up in the rough-and-tumble Turkwood housing project at Eddy and Scott streets. A self-employed janitor, he does ministry work with young men at the San Francisco Christian Center, a Mission Street church. His wife, Cynthia, helps young women there. The couple have raised three children, now ages 25, 23 and 17.

A good San Francisco life, but never one lived in a home they owned. The Bells, longtime renters currently in a McAllister Street Victorian, spent the past five years looking at houses here and as far away as Stockton, only to find sky-high prices and possible hours-long commutes.

"I was like, I'll never get to live in the city," Bell, 46, said. "This is the best place in the world to live."

That was then. Now, the Bells are one of 10 families approved for units in Bayview Hope Housing, a 20-unit complex to be built on what is the parking lot of the True Hope Church of God in Christ, on Gilman Avenue in the Bayview- Hunters Point neighborhood.

The complex will have two- and three-bedroom units, each roughly 1,050 square feet. There will be private parking and landscaped open space. Ten homes will have private yards. Construction begins in the next two months, and units should be ready by year's end.

"There'll be a driveway where a dad and son can wash the car and an area where kids can play -- and all mothers can look out their windows and watch them," says the Rev. Arnold Townsend, the assistant pastor at Bread of Life Ministries in the city, who was instrumental in shepherding the process. "It's a community."

More than three years ago UPC began the process of developing a four- building, 800-unit complex (including half-million-dollar condominiums) slated for a 1.75-acre site at 300 Spear St.

A 1990 city policy required developers to hold 10 percent of for-profit, market-rate units for qualified middle-income San Franciscans -- giving working residents the chance to buy a home in a prohibitive market. But housing advocates said the policy was sometimes applied randomly by the city's Planning Commission.

That changed last year when the Board of Supervisors passed an "inclusionary housing" ordinance, crafted by then-Supervisor Mark Leno. It raised the affordable housing requirement to 12 percent -- but allowed units to be built elsewhere than the main development site, if the developer was willing to part with 17 percent of his units.

Bayview Hope Housing was conceived a few years ago when Townsend approached developer Martin Dalton, one of three UPC partners, and suggested that, to meet his affordable housing requirement, the developer consider becoming partners with one of the many Bayview churches that own unoccupied land.

Dalton inspected about 10 such sites and eventually found Rev. Arelious Walker at True Hope, which this month celebrates 35 years of offering both spiritual solace and day care, drug rehabilitation, job skills training and other community-improvement programs.

Walker, who grew up in small-town Atlanta, Texas, and came to San Francisco 47 years ago, saw in Dalton's proposition a way to stem the outflow of some of his parishioners -- now numbering about 300 -- to the suburbs.

"In the last 10 or 15 years, 35 to 40 families have moved (out), and 50 percent have bought houses when they moved out of the city," he says.

The Bayview African American population shrank between 1990 and 2000 from roughly 73 percent to about 52 percent (Hispanics are the fastest growing population there), and citywide from about 10 percent to less than 8 percent, according to U.S. census figures.

Walker founded a sister church in Antioch, the Grace Temple Church of God in Christ, where many former True Hope parishioners worship. Walker's fastidious appearance -- pressed shirt and slacks, natty tie, neatly trimmed white beard -- seems at odds with his mind, which bubbles with possibilities. That trait attracted Dalton.

"He's the kind of guy who, you give him an idea, he has a vision," Dalton says. "We worked off a handshake for a year and a half."

The pair worked with Leno's office to help pass the inclusionary housing ordinance (which of course benefited their project); Dalton says his project is a model for developers frustrated by the lengthy approval process for building in the city.

The inclusionary housing law hasn't pleased everyone. Critics such as Calvin Welch of the Council of Community Housing Organization say it gives developers an incentive to buy cheap land in low-income neighborhoods -- often former manufacturing or industrial sites -- and build complexes that anchor folks to that community rather than allowing them to move into affordably priced lofts or condominiums elsewhere.

"Are we really saying that the only place where people of color can live is in sites with toxic issues, or that have no neighborhood school, no neighborhood park, no neighborhood shopping district?" Welch says.

He lauds Dalton's ingenuity in hooking up with a land-owning church, but notes most housing nonprofits aren't land-rich. Plus, he says, only seven of 49 square miles in the city are zoned for housing -- creating a land shortage.

But proponents, including Mayor Willie Brown, say such projects bring affordable housing to those who need and want it in hard-hit neighborhoods, and allow folks to stay in the city -- and own a home.

"If we got to the point where we felt there was too much of a segregating out, city leaders would slow down the process," said Mayoral spokesman P.J. Johnston, adding that Brown (traveling on the East Coast last week) was enthusiastic about the project.

Bayview Hope officials say outreach to potential families -- all required to be first-time owners -- was done through churches, flyers and other community centers. Each family must earn no more than the city's median income -- $77,500 last year, when the first 10 families applied, $82,530 for this year's 10. Potential owners attended free credit-repair seminars (one is offered this weekend) and, once cleared through a local bank, were invited to place a down payment.

Dalton says UPC will build units for about $225,000 and sell them for between $275,000 and $375,000. The profits -- about $1 million before taxes -- will go directly to True Hope, and not a dime of city, state or federal funding will be required for construction.

Walker says the income will help the church pay off the remaining $600,000 on its mortgage and fund a new computer learning center, among other projects. Children of the families in the complex will fill his day care center -- a boon for the church and the families. He says a neighborhood association will be formed to ensure the complex is free of trash and other decay.

"When middle-income people pay that money (to buy), they're not going to do that," he says. "The middle-income (group) is what we overlook in this city -- the policemen, the firemen."

And folks like Ricardo Bell, who hopes he and his family will have an extra- merry Christmas when he receives the key to his new home.

"That's all I'm waiting for," he says. "The key."

Where to go

The next free credit-repair seminar for Bayview Hope Housing hopefuls starts at 10 a.m. Saturday at True Hope Church of God in Christ, 900 Gilman Ave., San Francisco. Call Haight Street Mortgage at (415) 431-7655 or sign up at www.haightstreetmortgage.com/seminars.